On Revolution and Saving the World
by Kaiorven
Summary: Power corrupts, and even the destined saviour is not immune. When Naruto Uzumaki subjugates every breathing female in the Five Shinobi Nations, only one person remains to combat his reign of terror. Unfortunately, that person just happens to be amoral, uncaring Uchiha Sasuke. Add in the female alter-ego of aforementioned megalomaniac? The Naruto-verse is utterly, utterly doomed.


Warning: Not explicit, but comes pretty damn close.

I have no freaking clue how to categorise this fic, strange beast as it currently appears to be. Anyway, it's not a romance. It's kind of dystopia, if you count this as dystopia. I'm not sure. I think this is probably the weirdest thing I've ever written played straight, hands down.

Also, as a warning, this is borne from my hate of the infamous Chunin Exam Day. That fic – I was tricked into thinking it was good, at first, with its intelligent world-building, Naruto's development, its exploration of people outside of Konoha, etc.

That was until the fic brought in the mega-harem, reduced the kunoichi into even shallower versions of themselves content with being pretty decorated pets, turned Naruto into a god-like being, introduced developments such as amazing discoveries and inventions and never mentioned them again, turned its bashing of Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, Jiraiya, the Third Hokage, Hiashi and practically everyone up to 11, threw out all stakes, conflict and character development, and became reduced into nothing more than a childish power-play, a pandering mess that throws away all its previous potential.

* * *

><p>She'd hoped her entry into the New-World would be one with dramatic flair. Unfortunately, she was even deprived of that, face-planting on the ground as she phased into existence mid-air.<p>

"Damn it! Is a good landing too much to ask for?" she demanded, after she'd rolled over and spat all the flecks of dirt off her tongue.

Kurama huffed in her mindscape. **You should be glad you didn't end up buried underground, or in the middle of a tree, or even inside of another person. Space-Time is not something to be trifled with, not even by a demon.**

"Unless you have red spinning eyes," shot back Naruko, but without much heat. Her orange jumpsuit was singed and in tatters. The memory of Satsuki, and with it, Shinku and Team 7 and Konoha made her chest squeeze tight, but her eyes were dry.

They had been dry for a long time, now.

Besides, she'd be seeing them again! And maybe her other-self –

And that thought was really, really strange. They'd assume she was playing a prank, at best, or that she was an imposter, at worst. Saving the world was really not what it was cracked up to be.

**You won't have to worry about that,** said the Kyuubi. **Two identical souls should not exist in the same universe, especially not one with as many marks of reincarnation as yours. You have either replaced yourself, or you do not exist here in the first place. **

And that was an even sadder thought.

Well, she was here now. And if this world was facing anything like what her past world had faced, then she was here to fix it and kick whatever ass needed to be kicked or her name wasn't Naruko Uzumaki. Believe it!

First, though, she had to get her bearings. After running up to the top of the highest tree she could see, she'd scoped out two stone monuments in the distance. Well, it wasn't as if she had anywhere else to head. Her easy pace travelling from tree-to-tree attested to the fact that her skills at ninja-ing were still intact in spite of the whole time travel thing. Which was thankful, because if she was going to go up against another Madara/Obito/Zetsu then she needed all the skills she currently had and could get.

As she neared the two stone statues, a distinctive waterfall came into view. Naruko would never forget the sight of it, not even in an alternate dimension. Vast, with the bottom of the cliff a churning pool of white, the waterfall itself was a natural monument, scenic and awe-inspiring. It was also the place where her best friend had driven a Chidori through her stomach, but she preferred not to think of that.

Faced with such a sight, she could not believe her eyes. Because while her brain was telling her that the waterfall was the waterfall from _The Valley of the End_, the two stone monuments facing each other looked nothing like Hashirama and Madara. Well, okay, the one replacing Madara on the right definitely looked like an Uchiha, with the spiky hair and the engraved tomoe in his stone eyes. But the person replacing Hashirama looked nothing like him.

He had short hair, for one. But what was strangest of all about him was not his dramatic stance, but the whiskers emblazoned on his face.

Like her whiskers.

If Hashirama and Madara hadn't existed here, then it was no wonder she'd never been born. Which begged the question – who were the heroes engraved there that had replaced the two Founders of Konoha?

The fox, for once, had no answer.

If Hashirama and Madara didn't exist, did Konoha? If Konoha didn't exist, then –

No. No need to panic. Before she definitively discovered she'd landed herself into an entirely alien place, she first had to check whether her home was still there. Reassured by that thought, she immediately began to head off again, but not before weaving a henge of the most non-descript female appearance she could come up with.

Even if she didn't exist here, she'd never met someone else with the same whiskers as her – and to see it on a statue was suspect. If there were other Uzumaki around apart from Karin and Nagato, still living, then –

Well.

Travelling to Konoha was mildly tiring to her chakra reserves, but nothing that a good meal or a short nap wouldn't take care of. She landed in a crouch just behind the tree-line, on the careful lookout for scouts manning the walls. The one thing she noticed, aside from the walls being under heavy construction, was that the Hokage Mountain that loomed over the village held only one face, prominently positioned and whiskered.

Now, Naruko had always hoped to have her face on the Hokage Mountain. But taking over the entirety of the rock-face seemed rather like overkill to her.

**Maybe he was the one who founded Konoha instead of Hashirama, here, **offered Kyuubi.

"Maybe," Naruto vocalised, and turned her mind to the task before her.

On the one hand, she could try sneaking into the village. Without her headband, if they received her, she'd no doubt be mildly interrogated if she pretended she was a civilian or face the full-blown treatment if they could tell she was a shinobi. But if she pretended to be a civilian, and then got caught as being a ninja, then her short stint in this new universe would no doubt be brought to an abrupt end. Unless she told them about the whole time travel thing, in which then she could say hello to one of the psychiatric wards Konoha held, which were useful for civilians but entirely useless for ninja.

Screw it. Who needed stealth anyway?

"Hey!" she waved at the walls. "I'm Naruko Uzumaki!" There was no response, and here she was practically bearing herself for target practice. "Is anybody there?"

Apparently not.

After waving and shouting loud enough that the statues at the Valley of the End could hear her, and still getting no response, Naruko decided that if the security was that bad, she could skip the niceties. At least one of the pair of Izumo and Kotetsu had always been alert on guard duty. This was ridiculous. Konoha could have been invaded in the space of time she waited for a reply.

As she scaled the walls, however, the reason for the non-response became horrifyingly clear. For on top of the watch-tower, there was a group of people. Four of them were crammed together where a trio at most was meant to stand and their bodies were obscured by the number.

Unfortunately, they were obscured by little else.

Naruko was not exactly unaware of the male figure. She, after all, had invented the Genderswap-Streaking no Jutsu, and even used it to pose as a male on a few missions. She'd both flipped through and proofread the manga and written works of her godfather, the first out of curiosity, the latter because she was sucking up to get more techniques.

Additionally, while her team was predominantly female, male ninja tended to have nice physiques as a rule. Shinku, for instance, had a really nice, lean whipcord figure that definitely made up for the pink hair, and a damn cute face that had sent butterflies in her stomach from the moment she first saw the Haruno when they were in the Academy.

On the other hand –

There was a girl that might have once been on guard duty. Her uniform was discarded, and her ANBU mask was cast aside in the obscenest unprofessionalism Naruko had ever seen. Her moans were muffled by what was currently jammed in her mouth –

Naruko would need brain-bleach for the rest of her relatively young life. She hadn't thought that people actually – that what they were doing even physically possible – she was pretty certain they weren't meant to go in _at the same time!_

That realisation made her squeak, and topple off the wall, rendering her as clumsy as one of the damsels-in-distress Jiraiya wrote for his male protagonists of Icha Icha, "Make Out Paradise" indeed.

_If only they were just making out_, her inner self cried as Naruko futilely clawed at her eyes.

Even at the muffled thump as she face-planted for the second time that day did not seem to disturb the individuals, still rutting as energetically as rabbits.

What creeped her out most of all was that each male crammed with (_Into, you mean,_ offered the sadistic part of her brain which really needed to SHUT UP) the female in the tower was identical – whiskered and blonde – and their expressions were twisted into crude approximations of the same looks of pleasure. It was the same face as the face on the mountain and at the Valley of the End.

_Shadow Clones_, her unfunctioning side-of-reason sputtered out, then gave up and curled into a corner, whimpering, as she heard cries of pleasure from behind her.

Well, okay. Since the guards on the tower were clearly indisposed, then she could head out up to the Hokage Tower. And maybe discreetly hint that those people should be fired as ninja, for the safety of the village, of course. Seriously. It was insulting.

How the hell did someone powerful enough to have his face on three different statues completely miss an intruder while having public group sex (WITH SHADOW CLONES OH GOD) in a guard tower?

Strangely enough, no one else in the village streets seemed to notice the fact that a complete stranger had entered, either. Not only that, but there was something really, really off that she couldn't place her finger on.

It was only when she passed Ichiraku Ramen, which had expanded into a stall four times as large, with no Teuchi in sight, that it struck her.

She had seen absolutely no men in the village, apart from the man/men at the Tower. And that creeped her out most of all.

Reaching the Hokage Tower, was almost a relief. Asking whoever the hell was in charge what was going on would be her first bet. The Old Man would never have let something so ridiculous happen under his watch. And if it was Tsunade, she'd have pounded both disobeying ninja into the ground with her pinky, naked or not. Danzo, if he discovered, would have made public sex a capital offence. Who else would be Hokage? Kakashi? Jiraiya?

It was with a shudder that Naruko wondered if her two mentors might not approve of the stunt.

_Not on active duty,_ another part of her mind reminded her.

**Your pathetic furless species has always been rather insensible and illogical in your mating rituals,** Kyuubi reminded her. **You think this is bad? I was subjected to a personal view of the matings both Uzumaki Kushina and Mito conducted. No doubt in time I will have to close my eyes and ears through yours as well.**

The prospect of sex, Naruko firmly told her literal inner demon, had never been this unappealing in her whole life.

"Who are you?" asked one of the women at the tower, in a cat-mask. Yuugao!

"Naruko," she offered her first name. Perhaps she could wait till later to reveal her clan heritage. "I'm here to see the Hokage."

"The Kage currently has all of his sessions booked out," said the ANBU. "Perhaps if you wished to put your name down for tomorrow – no doubt he will wish to celebrate after the execution of his worst enemy –"

At that, Naruko gave an impatient huff, and with a quick burst of shushin speed, dodged past the ANBU into the room, and up the stairs.

Before her, she saw the blonde man again, his eyes cold, an axe hefted in his hands, the Hokage hat balanced upon his head. Kneeling at his feet was a man with dark hair, spiked at the back, an Uchiwa Fan emblazoned on the back of his robes. "It took a long time, but my vixens were finally able to hunt you down. How does it feel, to know you were bested by the Dead-Last?"

The blonde man with the whiskers was being fanned at his sides by a few women all dressed in sheer clothing. It felt, bizarrely enough, like she had been thrust into a cheap pornographic period film.

The bowed figure spat at the ground. "Tell me, how many husbands, fathers, brothers have you killed? How many of these sluts came willingly to suck your cock?"

A dismissive laugh. "You know, you could have been me. I had to work for all of this, had to beg and scrape for every bit of acknowledgement I got. You? You had it handed it to your on a platter, all because you were the 'Last Uchiha'."

Her mouth went dry. The Last Uchiha? "Satsuki!" Her voice cracked, and the memory of her and her best friend, facing down Uchiha Obito in their last dying moments, her hand clasped around that of the girl who she had finally brought back, only to die –

It was then the ANBU, who'd followed, broke out, having just arrived, "I told you the Kage was not to be disturbed! I'm so sorry, Naruto-sama –"

_Naruto_, said her now somewhat conscious level of higher thought, _Isn't he the guy from one of Ero-Sennin's non- pervy books?_

"Oh look," said the sardonic voice of the kneeling figure, which was definitely, utterly male, and definitely not Satsuki. A cousin? Had someone else survived the Uchiha Massacre instead of her? She felt a pang in her chest. "We have an audience."

Behind the executor and the punished, instead of the usual desks in a ring for the Hokage, his advisors, and paperwork-ninja to welcome in civilian clients, a huge throne had taken its place, wooden and carved like a dragon. Beside it was a smaller throne, plush –

"I don't recognise you," said a familiar voice behind her, and Naruko was then acutely aware of the sharp blade edge resting against her throat.

"Hinata-chan?" asked Naruko, then slapped her head and corrected herself, shuffling nervously. She could probably break out if she tried hard enough, and even repel the blade with a burst of chakra if need be, but that would probably mean she'd have to attack Hinata-chan, or even kill her. "I'm sorry, I mean, you don't know me, but –"

"Tell me what the hell is going on?" The blonde male, apparently called Naruto, asked in front of her, laying down his axe.

"She," said the not-Hinata, who was currently threatening to behead her, "Is a jinchuuriki, with the Eight Trigrams Seal invoking the Death God."

At that, the whole room fell silent, and the killing intent from everyone spiked up a few notches, leaving the space seething with tension. Naruko swallowed. If she were ever going interdimensional hopping again, she would definitely pretend to be a civilian.

"Well," she managed, "I was here because I tried to talk to the guards, but the ANBU on duty was too busy being – uh – banged by your shadow clones. It was a terrible security oversight, you know, so I felt as though I had to warn you –"

The Last-Uchiha-who-was-not-Satsuki burst into laughter, though his hands were chained and he had apparently been seconds away from being executed.

"Who. Are. You?" Naruto gritted out, apparently not pleased at being made a fool. In his hand, there formed a distinctive shape of blue chakra, a spiralling ball, with the slight churn of air-currents that heralded the Rasen-Shuriken.

She gaped, and felt vaguely affronted by the universe. "I invented the Rasen-Shuriken! Who the hell are you?"

"He asked first," said not-Hinata from behind her, digging in the blade for emphasis. Naruko could feel the long hair of the other girl tickle her neck. "I suggest you answer."

_What do I do?_ She demanded of the Kyuubi. _How much do I reveal?_

**Shut it brat. I'm trying to prime your body for when you inevitably get your throat slit so we can survive and get out of this ordeal. **

_Maybe the mental wards won't be too bad, _she told herself. And if she was going to go out, she might as well do so in style.

Her lip quirked up. "My name is Naruko Uzumaki. I like my teammates, my friends, ramen, training, gardening and pranking people, though I've stopped more or less after becoming an official ninja of Konoha. I dislike snake-creeps, people who won't stay dead, the fact that every evil person I've ever come across seems to all be working for the sake of peace, and the three minutes it takes for ramen to cook. My dream? Well–" And here she faltered, "My dreams were wiped out with the attack of the Ten-Tails, but I guess that now I'm here, my hope is to stop the rise of the Akatsuki, the formation of the Ten-Tails, and the destruction of the world."

There was again, a deathly silence around the room.

"My name," said Naruto, "Is Uzumaki Naruto, and I call bullshit."

At this, Naruko bared her teeth. "How do you think I felt when I arrived at your gates to discover the awful security you had? You might be descended from my clan, but you're the worst Hokage I've ever seen!"

The airflow down her neck was suddenly constricted, and to free herself, she spat wind-chakra from her mouth with a half hand-seal, sending the kunai flying. She lowered herself and tensed. A single tail of orange chakra formed behind her, as the Kyuubi grumbled.

Even the woman restraining Sasuke, her features darkened by what looked like Earth ancestry, stepped back to take up a ready battle-stance against Naruko. The practically naked fanning women also readied into attack position.

At this, the male-Last-Uchiha stood, and stretched, seemingly unconcerned. He neither activated his Sharingan nor prepared for battle. She frowned, until she noticed the seals encircling his wrists beneath his cuffs. Chakra-suppressors, and good ones.

"Naruko Uzumaki," said the Uchiha, "If what you say is true, then tell me, who was Satsuki?"

Every pair of eyes was now fastened upon her.

"My teammate," said Naruko. After all, here, Satsuki hadn't ever existed, and neither had she, apparently. "My best friend. The Last Uchiha, from where I come from. I promised her I'd save her –" No. No. She would not cry. Not here, surrounded by hostile enemies in a Konoha that felt more foreign than Suna, or Kumo. "–but I could not."

"Enough of this," Naruto apparently lost patience. "Kill the Uchiha. If Naruko's story is true, she may have a place here. For now, let her be imprisoned."

Well, there was no proof against it, except the impossibility of time-travel. She could wait in a cell, if they gave something to entertain her with.

Still, it was hard to watch as the Uchiha was again forced to the ground by the other kunoichi in the room, looking scarily similar to the best friend she'd lost. She let herself be cuffed by a wary Hinata, and led to the top of the stairway.

"I am Uchiha Sasuke," said the man, his voice quiet, from just behind her. "My dream is to revive my clan, and to kill a certain man."

Naruko reeled back. Those words – the voice was different, lower, and yet –

And then it hit her; from the arched brows, the aristocratic planes of his face, his skin, that same smirk, the hair spiked at the back. She had no doubt that if he could activate his Sharingan, she would see the same six-pronged star that Satsuki had wielded.

And then Naruko remembered blood on the battlefield, and a tearstained face, Shinku desperately plying medical chakra into Satsuki's splayed form on the stretcher. She remembered the glow of the red, red, moon, as the ultimate illusion began to take hold. She remembered failure, tasted it. She remembered smoothing the spikes of Satsuki's fringe as her eyelids fluttered closed over Eternal Mangekyo which winked out, dark, like snuffed candles.

_My ambition is to revive my clan… and to kill a certain man._

Naruko looked at the room, at the Last Uchiha, at the man who was here where her best friend should have been. The other Uzumaki (blonde like her, whiskered like her) swung down the axe.

Naruko tore out of not-Hinata's grip, still cuffed, and kicked the wooden handle of the axe so it smashed instead into the wooden flooring. With a speed she did not know she possessed, she formed the Rasen-Shuriken with her cuffed hands, and hurled it down to the floor.

The ball of wind-chakra smashed through, grinding through wood and stone and stairs. A dozen assassination techniques, some more well-aimed than others, flew toward her. A carefully manipulated rasengan, the size of her fingertip, ground away at the chain linking her two cuffs, which snapped the bonds.

"Should you rescue this criminal, you will incur the wrath of the entire shinobi forces," said Naruto. Somehow, he too had changed, the chakra oozing off him thick, even more powerful than what she'd felt from the Kyuubi.

**What idiocy are you resorting to? That other Uzumaki has control of the completed Ten Tails!**

Naruko then hauled the Uchiha over one shoulder. "I cannot let him die," she told the man-she-might-have-been. "I cannot let my best friend die, no matter what form she might take, no matter where she is, no matter what she has done. I promised I would save her, and I never, ever back down from my promises."

_Please make this work, _she begged internally. _Please._

Two jyuuken strikes disabled her arms. Another two aimed to shut off her chakra. Another two, and she coughed blood onto the steps. This Hinata was vicious.

She tore away, and her head was nearly smashed off by a doton attack. Naruto himself sent a Tailed Beast bomb at her head.

Naruko took a shaky hold of her three-pronged kunai, the seal etched upon it with her blood in a finessed reverse-summoning array. She hurled it out the window as far as she could, called upon her blood, and through the connective leylines, activated the seal. It was not Hiraishin, but it was a brute-force alternative where the other had perpetually eluded her.

There was a strange twist in her stomach, before she and Uchiha Sasuke vanished into mid-air, pulled towards the summoning array she'd etched onto the kunai, her palm glued to the metal handle. Acres of forest behind her was decimated with another Tailed Beast Bomb, wood splinters and plant debris flying. As she fell, she threw the kunai again, along with two others.

She summoned herself to the first, caught it, hurled it again while still falling in mid-air, then repeated her manoeuvre with the second, then the third. All the while, the Uchiha remained draped over her shoulder. Attacks sputtered out from behind her, water and fire and wind and lightning and earth, as every kunoichi in the whole of Konoha moved as one, a hive mind.

She didn't stop until she reached the Valley of the End itself, and collapsed, woozy from the chakra loss. She landed atop the stone head of the Uchiha, an enlarged version of the face of the man she held.

"Fuck," she hissed. If she had arrived with her clothing in tatters, now they wouldn't even be deemed wearable in any universe. The orange jacket was shredded, as was the black shirt underneath, but thankfully the mesh with her under-wrappings was still mostly intact. "Seriously, I thought I was travelling to a past version of Konoha, not stepping into some strange parallel universe! Especially not one where every female I see is in desperate need of more layers!"

Uchiha Sasuke, still winded, found himself seized by the edge of his robes and dangled over the cliff off the water. "At least," he snarled, managing to sound threatening despite his current position over the waterfall, "Decide if you want to save me or kill me, instead of switching between the two, idiot."

She pinned Uchiha-not-Satsuki with a glare. She had just saved his life, and he did not get to interrupt her incoming tirade. A deep breath.

"What the hell is going on in your universe? I mean, you're Satsuki. You're definitely her. Which means that –" The sight of the two statues at the Valley of the End, the Naruto one, and the Sasuke one made her head spin. "My alternate self in this universe is a pervert, who uses his Kage position to get himself laid." Here, she buried her head into her hands, "Ero-Sennin must be laughing his ass off at me."

* * *

><p>That settled it. Naruto-as-a-girl might not be a world dominating tyrant with a massive harem, but she was as slow on the uptake as the dobe had been before his sudden and terrifying transformation into what he was now. Of course, the whole dimension-travelling thing was farfetched, but when presented with Naruko, and what she had said, there had been no alternative.<p>

"Talk," ordered the aforementioned female.

"We just escaped from the most powerful man alive who's still hunting us –" it peeved him to admit that there was one more powerful than him, but there it was, "And you want to swap life stories?"

"In case you haven't noticed," said the blonde, who had currently earned a position as more irritating than all his fangirls combined, "I'm the only one in any shape here to be kicking ass, and I'm tired. I can't carry you any further, I don't have the energy to reverse-summon myself unless I want to die of chakra exhaustion, and if I know what's going on here, then I might not have to blow up the Hokage's Tower again."

He stiffened. "I can travel by myself."

"With your chakra sealed, you'll be leaving tracks, and wasting energy," said Naruko, seating herself down and fretfully picking at her ruined clothes. Even with them half blasted off, she was ironically more modestly-dressed than he had seen in a long while. "I'm not good enough at sealing to try to undo it. I guess I could ask Kurama to try and pack you so full of foreign chakra the seal pops out like a cork, but you might explode instead."

"Hn." He had no rebuttal, but damned if he'd say that aloud. "You start first then." The word _idiot_ or _deadlast_ threatened to roll off his tongue, but he kept it back.

She grinned impishly, and saluted. "I am a kunoichi of Konoha under squad Hatake, with my teammates Satsuki Uchiha and Shinku Haruno and auxiliary members Sai and Yamato. My academy sensei was Umino Iruka, my jounin-sensei Hatake Kakashi, and I was the apprentice of the Toad Sannin Jiraiya. I am the daughter of Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, the jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. Furthermore, I am the unofficial heir to the Senju as well as the Uzumaki as distant cousin of Senju Tsunade."

So in this alternate universe of hers, not only were he and Naruto girls, but Sakura was apparently born a boy, unless Sakura had always had a secret brother born within their year. He knew most of the names, although the 'auxiliary members' he himself had never heard of. "Rank?"

Here, Naruko looked away. "Genin."

"Tch." He scoffed. A genin apparently capable of escaping from the holder of the Ten-Tails, but he couldn't honestly say he was surprised.

"Your turn." She nudged him with a toe, not rising to his contempt. Was it because she didn't care, or because her prior experiences with the female-him had made her used to it?

"I am Sasuke Uchiha, rogue S-Class Nuke-nin previously born in Konohagakure. I defected during the Chuunin Exams to join the Snake-Sage Orochimaru during their failed invasion, because every female there had decided to make my life a living hell."

Here, Naruko rolled her eyes. He dodged her half-hearted swing. "Let me guess. All the panties they were throwing at you was too much to handle."

"Hardly. They were too busy draping themselves over the dobe in between their active hostility towards me."

"Ah, well, sometimes you can't get everything," Naruko said in what she seemed to think was a wise, sagely, tone, but sounded more like the words of a lecherous old man. "I mean, I'm surprised, since Satsuki never had any trouble getting any male she met to grovel at her feet, but I guess being a universal sex-magnet is more of a Satsuki thing than an Uchiha thing –"

Sasuke ignored the second half of her reply. "That wasn't the issue. As soon as we passed the second portion of the Exams, any and every kunoichi from Konoha was actively trying to kill me," Sasuke ground his teeth at the humiliating memory. "I had to be saved by Kabuto himself, even with my cursed Seal. I mean, when Yamanaka Ino manages to nearly get your head impaled on a spike, it really speaks badly of your skills. I had to leave."

…

"You mean you weren't offended at that she tried to kill you, but that you were too weak to fend her off?" Naruko gaped. "Actually, never mind. That makes perfect sense. Continue."

Sasuke supposed he should have been affronted, but honestly? He didn't care.

"I then joined Orochimaru for the power to defeat my brother. I trained for him after three years, and then killed him when he was about to take my body. Following that, and the destruction of all of Orochimaru's old bases by Konoha, I hunted for my brother alone for several years –"

"Konoha grew powerful enough to destroy all of Orochimaru's bases?" Naruko sat cross-legged on the stone. "Man, Tsunade must have seriously upped her game as Hokage."

So, apparently things had diverged sooner than he had thought. "Tsunade was never Hokage. That position was taken by Naruto soon after his promotion to Chunin, where he defeated every other competitor in the Chunin Exam Finals."

"But there were so many strong guys there!" Naruko scratched her cheek, shaking her head in disbelief. "Or at least at mine. I mean, Temari's pretty badass, Kankuro was really good with his puppets, Shino's pretty good mid-range and Shikamaru is super-smart even if he is as lazy as all hell – and they were the non-prodigies of the bunch. I mean, Neji nearly kicked my ass! And Gaara was so good, Satsuki had to pull out an B-rank assassination technique to even land a scratch on him!"

"Clearly we went to two very different Chunin Exam Finals," said Sasuke. "Gaara and I were the only males aside from Naruto. Otherwise, it was Hinata, Temari, Tenten, Ino, Kin and Karin."

"Hinata? Ino? I mean, they're both pretty cool, but I never thought of them as, well, combat-oriented ninja," Naruko could not mask her disbelief. Then again, the Hinata she had met here was definitely not the Hinata she knew. "I don't think I even met Karin until she became your follower in Sound. She was at the Chunin Exams?"

Sasuke did not deign this with an answer.

At last, Naruko broke the awkward silence again. "You know, you're taking the dimension-hopping story rather well. I'm surprised you actually believe me."

Sasuke shrugged. "The first thing Naruto said to me on the day of the Chunin Exam, was that he'd lived through a near endless time loop, and I would be gone and rewritten again the moment he failed to make Chunin. I didn't believe him, at first."

A pause.

"I refused to believe him, until it was too late. I'm not making that same mistake again."


End file.
